ABC is an evidence-based parent-training program. Why are evidence-based interventions important? Photo: Shutterstock
Here's a story about how a New York City-based organization called Power of Two is using empirical evidence to help children and families.
The story begins by explaining how difficult it can be for families to handle the stresses of living in poverty.
“When families are living in poverty, the infants need extra-sensitive parents and it’s harder for the parents to give that extra-sensitive parenting,” said Anne Heller, founder of Power of Two, which opened in Brownsville, Brooklyn, last fall and has worked to help nearly 100 families become more sensitive to their children’s needs.
The idea is that forming strong attachments in the first years of life can buffer children from stress over their lifetimes, and also lead to better academic achievement. Without these attachments, the theory goes, some of these children will already be at a disadvantage by preschool.
The Power of Two's founder, Anne Heller, wanted to find a way to help families overcome the obstacles of poverty and homelessness. She went to the psychological literature on child development to find evidence-based interventions.She found a program called Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC)...
...developed by Mary Dozier, a professor at the University of Delaware as part of her work on the Infant Caregiver Project. The group’s research found that children who received the ABC intervention had more secure attachments than those in a control group.
The researchers also looked at levels of cortisol, the hormone produced by the body in response to stress. Children who received ABC had a healthy rhythm of cortisol levels, starting high in the morning and low in the evening, but the control group had a blunted pattern, which researchers said has been linked to behavior and attention problems.
The program Power of Two is an excellent illustration of how we can use consumer-of-research skills to find evidence based programs that help improve people's lives. In this case, it's an evidence-based program that can help people become better parents. When the Power of Two started the program, they applied for funding, and then,
Together, Heller and Bernard hired 12 coaches and recruited families to participate in the program at schools and hospital fairs. The children currently served by the Power of Two range from six months to two years old. [So far, 61] families, including Dawkins and her daughter Maya, have finished the program. [about 100 families total have been involved.]
Here's an example of what ABC looks like in practice, as described by the journalist:
At age 2, Maya turns to her mother, Taneice Dawkins, to show off her every move. She pounds a spoon on a table, prompting her mother to exclaim, “Oh, it’s a loud banging spoon.” The little girl hands her mother a cup, a piece of paper, a plastic banana. Each time, the 36-year-old Brooklyn mother responds, “Thank you, Maya,” a phrase the toddler repeats.
...
During 10 home sessions, ...coaches [had] worked with Dawkins — as they do with all parents in the program — on three areas: how to better nurture the child, how to avoid frightening her and how to follow the child’s lead. For example, nurturing can be picking a child up immediately after a fall. Sounds simple, but many families worry this will spoil the child, a myth coaches try to dispel. Behavior that is frightening to a child can range from nonstop tickling to a parent’s fits of rage. And following a baby’s lead can be the trickiest area to learn, forcing the parent to pick up on subtle cues such as throwing a toy when the child wants to play alone.
Chapter 1 in the text describes the benefits of being a good consumer of information. Anne Heller of Power of Two certainly applied her skills as a consumer of information to research the types of programs that would be most likely to help children living in poverty.
Questions
a) What makes the ABC (Attachment and Biobehavioral Catchup) program "evidence-based?"
b) When the journalist mentions that "children who received ABC intervention had more secure attachments than those in a control group," what does that tell you about the research behind the ABC intervention?
c) Why do you think Anne Heller chose to look for empirically-supported programs, rather than simply trying programs she'd heard about, or programs that sounded good to her?
d) Does research on the ABC program count as applied research, basic research, or translational research?
Suggested answers
a) Since ABC interventions have been tested empirically by researchers and published in peer-review journals, we can be reasonable sure that the intervention actually works. It is supported by research. Psychologists believe that all interventions, such as therapies and social services programs, should be evaluated through well-conducted studies.
b) This means that ABC has been tested in an experiment, probably through random assignment to the ABC program or to a control program.In this experiment, the independent variable would have been type of program (ABC or control), and the dependent variables would have been the children's attachment style and their cortisol levels.
c) Answers may vary, but you might have considered that programs that simply sound good may not actually work. When it comes to behavioral interventions, it is essential to be sure the programs we are using have been shown to actually benefit people.
d) I think this counts as translational research, because it uses lessons from basic research (in this case, on attachment theory) to develop and test an intervention. The ABC approach bridges basic research on attachment and the applied context of parenting while coping with the stressors of poverty.
However, if the Power of Two program were to attempt to follow the families who have gone through the ABC training in their community to see the effectiveness of the program in the real world, that would count as applied research.
